Abolition of classes! Abolition of private property! Abolition of exploitation in all it's forms!
The nature of our society is, unfortunately, such that the general public hardly knows what exactly it is supposed to know, and ignore what ought to be ignored. The people find themselves consuming only that knowledge which their governments and ruling classes want them to consume. The truths about our societies are often concealed and distorted, the result consequently being that the people find themselves hating and condemning, even dreading, those whose activities are geared towards their own benefit, and adoring and celebrating those whose mission it is to run down the society and those whose drive it is to fulfill their private interests at the expense of the compact majority. The people, oftentimes, find themselves supporting the oppressors and vilifying the oppressed.
But are they to blame for this? A quick understanding of the nature of the organization of the society would prompt anyone to sympathize with, and not criticize, the masses and the thinking and perception that their subjection by the ruling classes has resulted in. Any class that has, at any period in time, risen to the the leadership of the society, has created a society after its own image, bearing its tastes, preferences and likes, as well as its dislikes. It has borne in its society a population with a thinking that is clouded in its aspirations and ambitions, even though, to the majority of the population, these aspirations are a mirage. The thinking of the people, therefore, is merely a reflection of the material conditions they live in, and this cannot change unless those conditions themselves change in totality.
'Abolition of classes!', the Communists exclaim! What a bold ambition and desire, to abolish what has existed for all eternity! But just what do they mean by this? Why do they want to abolish classes?
The society, as we know it today, is diverse and multicultural. There exists over seven billion people in the world. There exists close to two hundred sovereign states and governments. There exists thousands of languages and ethnic groups. The organized religions in the world run in the hundreds, possibly thousands. But in the midst of all this diversity, there exists one thing that transcends all categories of people in the world; class. There exists, in every country, two basic categories of people; those who work and those who don't. An honest and realistic analysis of the society reveals that, in the face of modern organization of economic production, there exists on the one hand those who labour and toil in order to make a living and, on the other, those who procure the labour of others, while not engaged in the process of production in the first place.
It is these two categories of people that form the classes in modern society; the working class and the capitalist class; the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
The perception, unexpectedly, persists among majority of the population that the present classes, as they are, have existed since eternity. Since we have been born into a world where majority of the world's population find themselves subjected to the slavery of capital, we have the impression that things have always been this way, and will forever remain the same. However, it would be interesting to note that in fact, for much of the period that human beings have existed as a species, there was never any trace of classes within the human society. Before the first traces of centralised society began to emerge some 8000 years ago, humanity existed within the framework of communalism, in which every member of the community participated equally in the process of economic production, and equally appropriated the products of their labour. Everyone cooperated in the running of the affairs of the society. And cooperation was not only desireable; it was necessary for the survival of the human race at that period. The underdeveloped forces of production demanded that people come together in order to produce their means of livelihood by taking advantage of collective labour. Members of the community also had to come together to keep guard against predators and other threats to their existence. Simply put, the mode of production that existed at that period was communalism; a mode of production in which the existence of classes was unheard of.
With increased development of the forces of production, however, and a corresponding increase in the population of the human race, there occurred a need to restructure the organization of the society. This restructuring, occurring independently in different human societies at different periods of time, led to the emergence of a ruling elite on the one hand, and a mass of toilers on the other. Thus, the first forms of class based society were created; forms which have metamophorsed into the classes we have today. Hence, the origin and development of classes within human society is a recent phenomenon as far as the historical existence of mankind is concerned, and is in fact the product of certain socioeconomic factors that required their advancement.
The abolition of classes is desireable for the human society, not only because it promotes equality among all the human beings in the world, but also because only in this can the further progress of the species be assured. Classes, as they are, render human society backward and barbaric. The very nature of a human being as a rational species and a conscious producer is negated, sadly, by the presence, due to various socioeconomic factors, of classes. Only, therefore, in the abolition of the categorisation of human beings as brought about by classes can the proper nature of humanity, entailing conscious and rational cooperation in production, be fully achieved.
In summary, humanity wants to achieve the highest and most fulfilling aspects of its characteristics as a species, and classes are a hinderance.
But the abolition of classes necessarily requires the abolition of private property!
In bourgeois society, private property has become negated for majority of the human population, as we find ourselves sharply polarised between wage labourers and the owners of capital. In the present economic system, property exists as capital, that is, the kind of property that employs wage labour which in turn increases it further. Property, in its proper definition, refers to the means of production in our economy, which consists of the factories, mines, land and all assets used for the production of wealth and the means of livelihood of the society as a whole. Further, looking at it more closely, private property, as regards the means of production in the economy, only exists as bourgeois private property in present society, since it only exists among the tiny elite class; the bourgeoisie, who form the ruling class of the entire global society.
But why are the Communists interested in abolishing a form property which has formed the basis of the economic organization of our society?
The property question, which the Communists put at the core of their political and economic programme, is not at all unique to the Communists as a social movement. All previous revolutionary movements, throughout the history of human society, have had the property question at the very core of their struggle. When the various Germanic communities rampaged through Rome with a view to conquering and overthrowing the Empire, the old institution of slavery as a mode of production was what was primarily under threat, albeit unconscious in the minds of the people at that time. Slaves, the primary form of property that existed at that time, had to be freed as the necessary condition for the establishment of the feudal system which was springing up as the new mode of production. When the people of France, in a bid to smarsh the then obsolete feudal system, put an end to the monarchy by toppling their king, the question of property was central in their demands. The French bourgeoisie, taking the lead in the French Revolution of 1789, smarshed all feudal property relations that characterised the Kingdom of France, such as ownership of all land by the king and the nobility and state monopoly over all mines and other means of production.
With the obsolescence of capitalism as a mode of production, and with the need to take human society to a more advanced system of production and distribution, there is need to restructure the economic, social and political organization of the society, and this, needless to mention, requires the reconstitution of the property relations that characterise the bourgeois society in which we live in. This, rightly, is exactly what the Communists want.
It is this abolition of private property, further, that will lead to the logical reconciliation of mankind with the product of his labour, and put him in harmony with with the entire process of production of his means of existence. Private property, in our case existing as capital, occurs as a creation of mankind, being a product of human labour, which is really the creator of the wealth of the society. Since it is through the toil of human beings that property is created; property which in the current system is converted into capital - the separate entity that employs human labour in order to further increase capital - it goes without saying that private property serves as a negation human labour, being the product of mankind through his own toil and the alienation of himself from it as a consequence.
Private property; better still, bourgeois private property, is, therefore, despite being a creation of human beings, an oppressor of humanity.
The Communists are in complete recognition of this fact; and know themselves as the front runners in the efforts to liberate mankind from the slavery of capital.
The previous systems in which human society has been living in have been modes of production that existed hand in hand with the presence of classes and class antagonisms. And this was necessary, as it was required to maintain order throughout a period in which the forces of production were still not developed enough to provide a surplus of wealth for the entire community. Moreover, it was key to promote the further development of the forces of production, through science and technology, with a view to increase the production of wealth to sustain the society. With the growth in scientific knowledge, however, and the advancement of technological development, class based society has created its own grave diggers. Capitalism has facilitated progress in the society to the extent that abundance can been achieved. Classes, established and thriving on the basis of scarcity, have been rendered obsolete. We are achieving a situation of abundance; we have no choice but to restructure our society to facilitate the proper use of our forces of production to provide an abundance of wealth to sustain our society.
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